How can I create effective evaluation questions?

For an evaluation to be successful it must be based on sound, well-constructed questions. While TrainingCheck includes a large number of carefully selected, pre-authored questions for you to choose from, you may also want to create your own questions to meet the specific needs of your organisation and context.

The evaluation questions you create should ideally:

• be linked to the objectives of the training programme/event
• be clearly stated and clearly indicate how to respond
• be valid (ie they test what they are designed to test)
• be reliable (ie they provide consistent results)
• be free from bias (ie are not ‘loaded’ questions)not overlap with other questions
• accommodate all possible answers (especially multiple choice questions)
• not offer too many response choices as to be confusing, but allow enough variety to provide useful results
• not assume the respondent knows the answer to the question
• where appropriate, take into account factors that may support or hold back learning and its transfer to the workplace
• be sensitive to any moral or ethical issues.

Also doing the following will usually greatly improve the user-friendliness of your questions and the quality and usefulness of the responses you get:

• agree the question content with key sponsors
• keep the questions short
• put questions in a logical order
• do not use abbreviated words
• do not make questions dependent on the responses to previous questions (branching)
• do not ask the respondent to order or rank a series of more than five items.

Once you have created your questions it is a good idea to pilot test them. Ideally this should be with people from the target audience.

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How can I create effective evaluation questions? What data collection methods should I use? When should data be collected? How can I create effective evaluation questions? When should I use sampling techniques? When should control groups be used?